BISHKEK, June 13. /TASS/. No initiative to organize a bilateral meeting between Russian and US Presidents, Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump, on the sidelines of the Group of Twenty summit in Osaka has come from Washington but the Kremlin believes the two leaders will be able to exchange a coups of words, Putin’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov said on Thursday.
"We don’t know if our American colleagues are preparing such a meeting [bilateral talks]. We have received no information about that. Neither have we received aby official requests for such a meeting," he said.
"We can only proceed from that fact that both Putin and Trump will be in Osaka during the Group of Twenty summit. In any case, they will have a possibility to have a brief conversation on the go," he said. "This is what can be predicted with a high degree of probability."
"Nothing else has been initiated," he stressed.
US President Donald Trump said on Wednesday he hoped to meet with Putin on the sidelines on the Group of Twenty summit in Japan’s Osaka.
The two leaders were expected to meet on the sidelines of the previous Group of Twenty summit, in Argentina last December, but the US president cancelled it literally a day before the agreed date. Following this move, the Russian side said in was ready for dialogue with the United States but on conditions that such a contact was initiated by Washington.
Earlier this week, Russian president’s aide Yuri Ushakov told journalists that the idea of a possible Putin-Trump meeting on the sidelines of the Group of Twenty summit was up in the air, as "after outlining this idea, the US side has not yet specified it."
At a meeting with President Putin in Sochi on May 14, US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo spoke about potential readiness to organize such a meeting. However no official request has been ever issued.
The Group of Twenty summit will be held in Osaka, Japan, on June 27-28.